Katie was ecstatic. She had just been informed that she had passed her bar exam and would now be granted permission by the state to practice law. This was an achievement that felt like a lifetime of effort, but she finally made it happen. After eight years of college full time while working two or three jobs at a time, it was finally over, and she could start making an impact in the world and helping people. She had focused her law degree on civil rights and minored in ethnic studies. Her goal all along was to help those less fortunate and privileged than her.

It was a particularly warm but beautiful day. Katie decided she would walk to her friend’s apartment to celebrate the news with her. Throwing on shorts and a tank top, she paused briefly at the mirror to make sure she looked presentable. Her shoulder length blonde hair was rather unkempt, so she decided to pull it back into a pony tail. She liked this look anyway, it exposed more of her pale, slender shoulders.

“I’ve got amazing news! U free to hang? I want to celebrate!”, Katie texted her friend Danielle.
“Um, I just got up, but sure. What is the good news?”
“Tell U when I get there! Omw!”

With that, Katie flung herself out her apartment door and into the hot, sunny weather. She made her way down her block and turned the corner, noting that the local park was looking particularly beautiful and with hardly anyone around. Considering her accomplishment, mood, and the beautiful weather, she decided she would treat herself to a nice stroll through the park to get to Danielle’s apartment, even though it actually made the walk longer.

The park had a handful of walking paths cutting through it. Katie chose the most secluded one, which wound through some of the more densely forested areas of the park. Upon reaching a quiet, shady, secluded spot, she paused, looked around, and sighed with joy. What a beautiful feeling, she could finally have time to relax, after 8 years!

An alert chimed on her phone. It was Danielle asking what was taking so long. Katie took a brief moment to take in her relaxing surroundings and continued on her way. She rounded a curve in the path and was slightly startled to see another person sitting on a bench. It was a girl, roughly the same age as her, of Indian descent. The girl had removed one of her sneakers and was looking intently at the sole of her right foot. Katie stepped on a twig, alerting the girl of her presence. She looked up from her foot and made eye contact with Katie. Not thinking too much of it, Katie gave a half-hearted “hello”, a smile, and a nod and continued walking. The girl said nothing. “Rude, but whatever,” Katie thought.

Katie had made it about 10 steps past the bench the girl was sitting on when she suddenly was frozen in place, unable to move. Panic quickly overtook her, belting out some stifled cries for help. “Wha… what’s happening?” She tried to turn around to look at the girl on the bench but found herself unable to turn her head. After only a few seconds, Katie felt her feet leave the ground and a sensation of floating. Was she being lifted into the air? Her shoes rose higher and higher from the walking path but her vision seemed to stay at the same level. Now able to look around, Katie realized she was somehow hovering above the path. Then, the next horrifying realization came – she had been shrunk to a miniscule size. 

The force that was suspending her in place in the air began pulling on her backward. The waves of this force flipped her body around, which allowed her to see the culprit – the girl on the bench was pointing some sort of device at her. Katie flailed and kicked through the air as the force field brought her closer and closer to her apparent captor, who had an unflinching look of nonchalant boredom on her face. Katie slowed to a stop once she reached the barrel of the gun-like device. The girl placed her open palm under Katie and switched the device off, causing Katie to suddenly freefall into the girl’s waiting grip. The girl brought her open palm closer to her eye level and began prodding Katie with her other index finger.

Katie flailed and screamed “What have you done!? Put me back, you BITCH!!”, but quickly became aware of the gut-wrenching reality – she was smaller than this girl’s fingernail and could not produce enough noise to even be heard. The girl pressed the tip of her index finger down onto Katie, which covered her entire frame, and pressed her down into her sweaty, warm palm to stifle her flailing, and as if to assert her dominance. Katie’s body was quickly drenched in pools of sweat from the girl’s clammy hands.

Wasting no time for whatever she had planned, the girl used her fingernails to rip off Katie’s clothes, exposing her pale, slender body, her skin tone contrasting from her captor’s fleshy-pinkish brown toned skin of her palm. The girl used her fingertip to stroke the length of Katie’s entire body one last time before closing her hand around her. 

The girl's sweaty hand tightened around Katie and squeezed all the air out of her lungs. Sweat from the giant palm oozed around Katie, causing her skin to adhere to the girl's palm. Suddenly Katie’s stomach dropped, as the giant hand whipped to a new location. Just as Katie was about the faint from the lack of oxygen and pressure, the girl’s grip released, and Katie slowly peeled away from the sweaty grip of the giant hand and felt herself slide down and off the edge of her palm. She was in freefall for what felt like seconds, before landing face down on another warm, fleshy, clammy surface. Katie flipped herself over to discover her new locale – the sole of the girl’s right foot, which was propped up on her left leg.

Now frozen in absolute shock and terror, Katie did not try to run, as it would not make a difference anyway. Just what was this girl planning to do with her?? The sole of this girl’s foot proved to be significantly hotter and sweatier than her palms. An intense heat was radiating through the surface of her foot, causing Katie herself to sweat profusely. Katie looked at the pinkish tan moist landscape around her – the foot stretched out the length of seemingly a football field to her heel. Cranking her head around, the girl’s massive toes rose up toward her at an angle like massive monoliths, the biggest toe the size of a small house in comparison. The long, slender toes slowly wiggled back and forth, apart and back together, the giant girl's attempt to air them out. Each massive movement of her digits shifted the “ground” beneath Katie and wafted the girl’s strong foot stench into her nostrils. The vinegary scent of sweat and musk was stronger than anything Katie had ever smelled, it was all-encompassing. Katie began to gag and cough. Katie hated feet, and just moments ago she was minding her own business and now she was trapped on a giant one.

The giant Indian girl used her thumb to knock Katie onto her back and press her into the softest part of her sole. Katie tried to bite and kick the giant thumb as it pressed her into the girl's skin, to no avail. The skin folded up around Katie like some sort of bizarre snow angel. The giant girl then released her pressure and squinted, observing how Katie's body looked against her skin. "Should work." She muttered. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small unmarked bottle of solution. Unscrewing the cap, a small brush tip emerged, covered in a clear, sticky liquid. Using her left hand, the girl grabbed Katie between her thumb and index finger and placed her on top of a small cut on her sole, in the center of her foot near the ball. Katie’s centimeter-sized body popped in between the gap of skin, with the edges of the cut now holding her in place.

Katie screamed at the top of her lungs and began crying hysterically as she looked up to see the giant girl’s other hand bringing the brush tip covered in solution down to her. The harsh hairs of the brush tip scraped across Katie’s naked skin, making several passes. The clear, glue-like solution coated her from head to toe as well as the foot skin encompassing her. Katie felt the solution quickly hardening and tightening around her. The giant girl blew her hot breath onto her newly sealed cut, blasting Katie's senses with the smell of her sour, hot, moist breath. This caused the solution to work faster, and Katie felt the sensation of her entire body being stretched and pulled in every direction, her skin tingling and burning as it fused with the girl's skin surrounding her. Katie panicked as she was clearly about to pass out, or die, and mentally prepaired herself for the worst.

And then. Nothing. The girl blew onto the spot where Katie lie one last time, then rubbed her thumb across it several times. The small cut was sealed. She gave a quick smirk of satisfaction.

Katie tried to scream, move, breathe, anything. But she couldn’t. She was completely frozen in place, retaining only her sense of taste, smell, and vision. She couldn’t even cry. She stared up at the girl’s uncaring face, seething with rage. The girl continued to rub her thumbs across her sole, massaging her foot, and wiggling her toes, causing Katie’s frame to stretch and contract with it.

A voice rang out, and the girl looked up away from her sole. “Did you take care of the cut on your foot?” asked the voice.

“Yeah, it was bothering me a little.” The girl replied. Both girls spoke with a heavy Indian accent.

“What did you use?” asked the voice.

“It was just some girl that walked by.”

“Oh, let me see!”

Katie felt herself suddenly launch upward as her field of vision whipped through the air, finally coming to a stop at the second girl’s face. Katie noted that the girl had similar features as her captor but was a few years younger, likely her younger sister. The girl’s face got closer and closer until her left, massive brown eye filled Katie’s entire field of vision, close enough to make out the subtle movements of the iris expanding and contracting. Katie caught a glimpse of her "reflection" in the eye, noting she appeared to be no more than a slightly lighter colored featureless outline of her body against darker skin.

“Wow, it is crazy how good and fast dad’s solution works. You can hardly even tell already!”, said the sister.

“I know, crazy, huh? It is a shame that we can never go public with his creations”, said Katie’s captor. “But hey, how do they smell?”

Katie’s field of vision shifted down to the girl’s nose, her left nostril right on top of her, blocking out everything else. It inhaled several times; which Katie felt the air around her suck into it as if a vacuum had been placed over her.

“Oh, they are pretty bad! I feel sorry for the girl. Wait. Do they even remain conscious?”, the sister inquired.

“Supposedly they do, so in essence it is not totally cruel since we are not killing anyone. However, there is no real way for us to know for sure since it is a permanent transformation”, answered Katie’s foot owner.

“Oh, well that is good, perhaps.”, the sister replied. Her attention focused once more on the spot where Katie was embedded, her body already now even less visible than moments prior. The sister positioned her mouth directly over Katie, about an inch away. Her lips completely filled Katie's field of view, allowing her to see every detail of the skin on the giant lips and peer into the cavernous mouth. The lips formed into a playful, mocking smirk. “Don’t worry little one, you will get used to being Priya’s foot! You might even grow to like it! She does take very good care of her feet!” She said. Her words were deafening to Katie. "You may even come to enjoy their awful smell, too," she added, with a wink, followed by a playful tap to Katie’s body, causing Priya’s foot to twitch. Priya retaliated by shoving her foot into her sister's face. This inadvertantly forced Katie into the sister's giant lips, which parted around her like a wet, sloppy kiss. Katie, along with Priya's sole, was coated with sticky saliva as the soft, slimmer inner lip surface smeared across them. Along with the saliva came a strong hint of whatever spicy concotion the girl had recently eaten.

“Oh, she will like it, huh Amara? How about I try it on you, and you can tell me how you feel!”, said Priya, playfully, continuing to force her foot in her sister's face.

Amara grabbed Priya's foot and forced it away.“No way! Not before I try it on you first!”, Amara retorted, spitting out some of Priya's foot sweat that had transferred in the exchange. The two laughed at their own antics.

Priya lowered her foot back down to the ground and shoved it back into her old, grimy, musky sneaker. Katie’s vision, in the process, went from a wild blur to pitch darkness. She came to a rest facing the sneaker sole and heard the material of the shoe stretch and creak around her as Priya tightened her shoelaces. Priya finally stood up from the bench. The weight of her full body now pressing down on her right foot, Katie felt the sensation of being stretched with immense pressure on top of her as her face was shoved deep into the sweat-soaked insole. The temperature around her increased exponentially, quickly turning into a sauna filled with foot stench and foot sweat.

From far, far up above her, Katie heard Priya's voice reverberate down through her body. "Alright, let's finish up our run!" Priya wasted no time giving her new passenger time to adjust to her new life as she and her sister resumed jogging at their normal pace. Katie would slam into the sole hard enough to feel the ground below through the worn insole. Every step completely jostled her brain. "Ah yeah, it worked. My foot doesn't hurt anymore!", Priya belted out.

Hours later, Priya slipped into her pajamas and sat down on the edge of her bed. She lifted up her right foot to take one final look. Her face filled Katie's vision once again, eyes widening slightly. "That stuff is amazing, Amara. You really cannot tell at all!", Priya called down the hall to her sister.

"Yeah, save some for me, I will have to try it next time!", Amara replied.

With that, Priya turned off her bedroom light, slipped her feet under her bed covers, and dozed off to sleep.

Katie had the sinking suspicion that Priya would never even acknowledge her presence again. She couldn't believe such an innocent looking girl could be so callous and cruel. Unable to move, scream, cry, or even sleep, Katie continued smelling, tasting, and absorbing Priya’s foot sweat as she stared into the soft pink bedsheet fabric that was gently rubbing against her. All she could do was think. Think about how, for the last 8 years of her life, she had toiled, busting her ass endlessly, acquiring massive college debt, working three jobs to make it through. The very day she passes the bar exam and, on her way, to becoming a successful lawyer helping people, instantly reduced to passively being part of a stranger’s foot.

She had no choice, but to accept her fate.